Encouraging The Viral Spread Of Link Bait Content
The term “viral marketing” has become quite popular in recent years. Each week there seems to be a new article or video which seems to capture the imagination of the internet world. Something humorous, shocking, or cute catches the attention of those who see it s and they can’t seem to help but show everyone they know by passing it around the net. Internet marketers have of course taken note of this phenomenon.
You can apply this concept to your own projects and take the notion of link bait distribution a step further than just writing inspiring content. Take for instance a funny video clip. When someone sees the video and thinks their friends might like to see, they may forward it in an email, instant message the link, or post it to their friend’s Facebook wall. In doing so, some whom they passed it on to in turn may do the same with their friends. As the video is passed on to more and more people, the likelihood of it passing by a blogger or social bookmarker that will drop a worthy link to you is accelerated substantially.
Now providing you have made the content easily identified as your own, and that the people viewing it can easily identify the source of the video (presumably your company or affiliate website) there is a good chance people will view your site to see what else may be there. In doing so there is a chance they may actually link to the content they found on your site which they liked, providing you with fresh links, or at least passing your site along socially resulting in more traffic. You can’t complain about that either.
Be aware however that becoming over reliant on properties which are not your own can result in the links you’ve worked for pointing in the wrong direction. For example let’s say that you were to post your video on YouTube or Daily Motion. Odds are that the majority of your viewers will link to that video page and not your own.
